ROSEMONT, Ill., July 25 -- At its annual analyst's meeting, Motorola announced a Blackberry-like handheld and dropped tantalizing hints about its ROKR iTunes phone.

CEO Ed Zander fired up the Black Eyed Peas' "Don't Phunk With My Heart" on a mysterious music phone with a scroll wheel, before phunking with the assembled press's hearts by saying the iTunes phone would launch within the next 66 days as part of a future joint announcement between Motorola and Apple.

Apparently, the iTunes ROKR is part of a new ROKR family, which includes several existing music-phones, none of which, other than the iTunes phone, are scheduled for release in the U.S. any time soon.

But Motorola had plenty of other new items to show off. The most striking was the Motorola Q, a Windows Mobile 5.0 handheld that had informally been dubbed the 'RAZRBerry.' The Q is even thinner than a folded RAZR (11.5 mm vs. 13.9 mm), with a small but very high-resolution 320 by 240 landscape screen and a QWERTY keyboard. The keys are oval and slanted away from each other like those on the Samsung i730 or a Blackberry. That makes them more comfortable to type on than the PalmOne Treo 650.

The Q also has a one-megapixel camera on the back, a mini-SD memory card slot, Bluetooth and a speakerphone. Additional features are up in the air before its launch early next year.

Motorola also built on its success with the RAZR and the buzz of other upcoming models, such as the SLVR and the PEBL, by announcing a slew of new RAZRs, SLVRs and PEBLs in various colors. There's a pink RAZR, red and green PEBLs, and a dark red SLVR. A RAZR for CDMA EV-DO networks like Sprint's and Verizon's will come to the U.S. by the end of the year, Zander said, while PEBLs should appear by the fall.

He also showed off the 3G UMTS version of the RAZR, the V3x which will go on sale in Europe by Christmasit packs in a two-megapixel camera, though it's somewhat thicker than the RAZR we know. The company is also working on an inexpensive candy-bar-style handset with the SLVR design, Zander said.

Besides the handsets, Motorola had other big news. Most exciting was an announcement concerning its Wi4 WiMax 802.16e rollout. Using cellular base-stations as small as backpacks, 802.16e promises broadband speeds on the run by 2007. It could be the follow-up technology to EV-DO, especially as Sprint has agreed to test it next year. Wi4 represents a full 802.16e infrastructure, including a commitment to make base stations, transmission equipment and handsets for the high-speed technology.

WiMax joins a few other technologies that Motorola aims to enlist to fulfill its quest of providing "seamless mobility" throughout the cellular sphere. The new A910 handset combines 802.11b Wi-Fi and GSM cellular, allowing for seamless voice handoff between the two using the UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) standard. The A910 follows up on two Bluetooth/GSM phones which have been picked up by the BT phone company in the UK. And the SD4500 landline phone system combines a cordless phone, a mobile-phone docking station, a video intercom and a VOIP box to give you the maximum number of options when calling from home. The SD4500 should go on sale in the US within the next month.

Motorola also showed one truly odd new technology: an electronic ink-and-paper combination that could let printers weave RFID tags into printed material or make pages glow when a charge is passed through them. Several pulsating signs around the announcement hall showed off the new innovation.

For photos of the Q, ROKR and Motorola's other new products, see our slide show.

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 9 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, one of the hosts of the daily PCMag Live Web show and speaks frequently in mass media on cell-phone-related issues. His commentary has appeared on ABC, the BBC, the CBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, and in newspapers from San Antonio, Texas to Edmonton, Alberta.
Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer, having contributed...
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